I turned left onto the main road near the pedestrian underpass to the commuter train station. The road there has five car lanes, two bike lanes, and an island in the middle.

With all that walking to do and that underpass to get to, it’s one of the intersections that has a countdown for those on foot along with the white hand on the WALK sign, going to a flashing red hand the last ten seconds, then the usual solid red DON’T WALK. If you’re a driver looking sideways at it, at least you know how long the wait is going to be–and it’ll be a lot longer than if  a car tripped the signal.

They looked twenty-something. The guy looked like he’d finally gotten the cute girl to talk to him, and she was pleased too; they sauntered, their attention on each other.

And they had not pushed that button. Their light was green, the hand stayed red, and I kept a careful eye on them as well as my own red light above their crosswalk.

Another driver came down the ramp to the right, that fifth lane, and stopped; he, too, was watching those kids.

Who suddenly noticed that the light had totally turned and we were stopped for them at our green. They glanced to their right–and ran!

Because, and I didn’t see it till too late to react (or…), a red car was barreling down that middle lane at full speed, the limit there at 45. The young man stumbled, trying to protect her, I think the girl stumbled too then, and I fully expected to see their bodies careening into the air. My immediate instinct, and apparently the other stopped driver’s too, was not to honk for fear it would distract the kids for even a nanosecond.

They made it just in front of the nose of the other stopped car. The red car never did slow down. I don’t know if that driver ever even knew.

We have to look out for each other in this life. We *have* to be willing to see to the extent we humanly can.  Why others are reacting the way they are, what it might mean, how we can do something that makes their world a little better and therein our own. Thank you dear God for looking out for every single one of us there, and most especially that couple, in that moment tonight.

I found a new amaryllis bud today, a Dancing Queen, one of my favorites. How did I miss seeing that coming up earlier! I brought it inside next to the first one just to make sure nothing out there develops a taste for the flowers, giving it a good watering.

The male Cooper’s showed up this evening and this time we all got to see him together.

Michelle: “That’s a big bird!”

Richard, appreciatively: “Just wait till he spreads his tail.”

Me, after we all watched him fly away at last: “There’s a flock of finches and endless doves but only one hawk pair. They’re individuals.”

Meantime, this is what the qiviut looked like this afternoon. I lay in bed last night, sleepless, wondering why on earth the C word should seem any worse in the dark than anything else when it probably wasn’t even a bad version, and thought about what I most wanted to do next–and this was it. It won’t take me very long to work on but it is exactly what I need right now: the pure qiviut is soft (well *yeah*), it is lovely, and I am knitting with the confidence I was lacking on the first try that I have the pattern worked out exactly the way it should be done. I know more now. It feels good.

Michelle exclaimed yesterday over the Epiphany project when I twirled it around my shoulders off the blocking to see; she agreed with me that it was one of my prettiest ever (the way one should always feel at the end of a project)–and now it is ready to be mailed. From Epiphany to Lorraine’s qiviut: I’m glad I have had these to soothe my fingers and my eyes and my soul. That, and the presence by whatever means possible of my family and friends. You have helped so much, and I am so grateful.

Friends from church came over today and scrubbed my car for me just because I can’t, I can’t be in the sunlight where I would be able to see what I was doing and it has a crack in the windshield so I can’t do a drive-through. They stepped in and took care of all that, borrowing my vacuum and an extension cord too and cheerfully working away till it was perfect. Wow.

One day down, the rest of a week to go…

A mole, been on the back of my face about eight years now, and suddenly last week there was a small second one behind it, same color.

Oh come ON. Just because my child has melanoma doesn’t mean…

Wait a minute… I dabbed my finger under the tap to get a little water on it, scrubbed at the spot and looked in the mirror again.

A splash of hot cocoa. That’s all it was.

The dermatologist laughed today when I told her that–classic, classic, and she told me she’d had a few patients she’d seen for similar reasons, as she checked out the rapidly growing lump in my scalp that had been a barely-there pinprick around, oh, I dunno, maybe December when we first noticed it? I assumed it was a lupus lesion and had asked to make sure, then after the rheumatologist ignored it I did too.

Richard’s been bugging me. Being married to a very tall man can really come in handy.

“Oh yes. It is,” then she immediately reassured me she was very sure it was just basal; cut it out and it will all be gone.

She had gotten my note yesterday about my daughter and my head and had immediately cleared a path to see and biopsy me today. Results next week. She will call me and we will set a time for my Mohs surgery–so, yes. I have skin cancer too.

p.s. The final pathology report came in today for my Sam: they did indeed get all hers. No chemo. Done. To quote her, “I will, of course, have to be monitored the rest of my life but that’s a small price to pay for having a life to live.”

There was a black squirrel doing a Salvador Dali/Wicked Witch of the West performance piece; I’m melting. Melting!

I refilled the water out there and went back to knitting up very warm fibers, grateful for air conditioning.

Ninety-nine degrees at 6:00 and sitting in the car waiting for Michelle’s commuter train to pull in, I wondered: who opened the door and let all the northern California out?

(Knit knit knit.)

I was thinking it was about that time of the evening, and looked up to see him fly in and land on the back of the chair. Someday I’ll get a good picture! He was facing me straight on, as he’s been doing of late.

There was a squirrel now cowering under that chair.

The Cooper’s and I looked at each other steadily: you are here.

Yes.

You are here.

Yes.

A long minute’s rest from all cares. He turned his head once, finally, like a small child being shy around a smiling grown-up.

Slowly, cautiously, a pointed black nose came up at the front of the chair and the squirrel just started to reach a paw, maybe two, I only saw one, as if thinking about hoisting himself up to see–when, clearly, he saw, and scampered back under.

Wings and tail seemed to spread wide in such slow motion, and yet the hawk was gone at the speed of a blink.

A friend who belongs to a CSA sent out word that her farmer had excess strawberries to sell and that if she could find takers for enough big cases, he would deliver them to her house.

Twenty dollars was a lot of just-picked ripe red sweet-smelling goodness.

Strawberry picking getting up very early on a June morning, before the 100/humidity+heat hits the top of the misery index in Maryland, was an essential part of my childhood–along with hours afterwards spent around the hot kitchen table, we six kids anchored in place by Dad working too at the head of it, hulling, Mom a few steps away at the stove. If Dad couldn’t get out of it either after all those hours bent over looking for fruit over and under those green leaves and was cheerfully working away at his mound of berries, then there was no hope of a kid weaseling out. None. Trust me.

So often, we would try to pun-up each other, starting off with a lame “I can’t believe I ate the hull thing”–but if you could make Dad roar with laughter it was definitely triple word score time.

Counting and anticipating: jar, jar, blinks and it’s all gone. (I know. Sorry. Reminding you of that movie is like singing “Feelings” in earshot. Woe woe woe your boat done with these–when we’re jamming, it gets bad.)

I hadn’t seen any hawks, neither the male nor the female nor any grandhawks yet this year, for about a month. And then suddenly in two days I have four times now, the adults.

The patient’s doctor was on vacation; the person covering decided not to wait for him but to get the results and to get the results to the patient.  Dermatology had wanted three months for an appointment to do the biopsy and the patient’s doctor had decided not to wait for them. The patient was too young to have melanoma and the lesion didn’t look like what melanoma is typically supposed to look like; he had decided not to wait till it did nor till the patient got reasonably older. The surgery center wanted to wait several weeks to do the operation; the person covering said NO you do my patient NOW.

The biopsy results came Wednesday. Melanoma.

The surgery was today, Friday, with no time to think out what one might need to do to prepare for the post-op period, just GO.

Aggressive but very shallow and declared stage one, still. They do believe they got it all.

And while we were talking to the not-too-groggy patient, the mama Cooper’s hawk caught dinner and prepared the meal (no blood and guts within sight, very tidy) right in front of us, laying out her picnic on our back lawn as we talked. A down feather got caught in her beak for several minutes till she finally managed after several tries to pull it off with her talons–the proverbial spinach between the teeth while people are watching.

My husband and I described to our loved one this gorgeous raptor capturing a share of our day. Somehow, when we need one, they always show up.

When the patient, far from us, needed it, friends became family and I will love them forever for it; they very much showed up over there.

When the patient needed that doctor to follow their gut intuition regardless, that doctor completely showed up for us all.

There’s a doctor out there who deserves a whole whack of knitting from me.

The phone rang at the end of January.  My in-law said the tests were positive and yes, it had metastasized.

The phone rang three days later. Different in-law.  Yes, it was.

The new news came yesterday. Protesting that three’s a crowd does nobody any good and there is much we do not know yet; what we do know gives much room for hope.

Trying to process it all: I write, I knit.

And I looked up in the early afternoon while typing to Chan: on the roof of the shed, with the awning blocking my view, all I could see was the feet and the wing and tail tips that had just arrived. The dove on the patio freaked and ran straight up and towards it; those big feet and feathers turned leisurely to enjoy the pizza delivery.

I think less than an hour later, he settled in on the back of that chair I talked about yesterday and simply stood and looked me in the eyes. He wasn’t looking for prey.

It was a moment of sharing in all Creation.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

My thoughts flew upwards on his wings and a prayer.

So we have this birdfeeder that closes a cage over the portholes under the weight of a squirrel.

Richard wanted me to hang it where he wouldn’t hit his head on it.

We have this wooden awning pole about three or four feet away, then, that the squirrels have learned is useful for flinging themselves from to knock it sideways to give the restaurant a shakeout.

There have been some mornings where they’ve done that so many times they’ve nearly emptied the thing before I’ve even woken up. The only problem for them is, whichever one takes the risk of jumping through my twig setup for the birds to perch on then has to jump down five feet to the hard concrete to get anything–where there are six to eight others, often, fighting and snarfing fast. Quite the scrum.

So I’ve done all sorts of things to make the pole unfriendly.  The tin foil, the parchment paper, oiling the paper. All of which worked for awhile. Pam spray gets tacky-feeling rather than slippery after awhile, and the one that got a feather stuck in her tail: she’s cool with that. It’s all paw-licking good.

I started taking the feeder in at night. (My daughter-in-law’s hasn’t been as accessible to them.)

The solution was so simple it eluded me for months. I’ve waited days now to see if it would hold–so far, it has.

I put a chair not quite just under the feeder: a little forward from it, to give them some leap comfortability (not to mention cutting down on the guano effect), but definitely closer than the pole. A straightforward small jump with far less risk and effort and no rewarding the others below for encroaching on their territory.

That lands them at the bottom of the feeder, which then closes down–no swinging side-to-side, no sunflowers.

And that was all it took.

They are not willing to take the risk and the jump when there’s an easy way to get to their target. They’re not making that leap when some other could reach right up and grab the prized perch from them and beat them to it. There has been no yardful of black and gray bushytails in the morning. No stolen seed. Just one lone squirrel patiently gleaning whatever the birds above might toss towards it, cleaning up the patio for me.

Perfect.

Michelle says give’em about a week.

p.s. And in the oh ye of little fate department: as I was typing that, a Cooper’s hawk careened through the patio, the squirrel was late to notice but then dove under the chair, the dove got away too but a finch panicked and hit the window. It landed on its back, wings quivering in shock, inches away from the glass. The hawk didn’t pause a wingbeat but curved in, acknowledging the dove and squirrel as lost to that hunt, and artfully grabbed the finch en route without so much as brushing the window nor stopping. It all happened so fast.

I called my neighbor to let him know it was plucking away on the fence between us. Feathers flew, then the Cooper’s did.

Not the bigger meal she was aiming for flying back to her nest with, but dim sum and den some. Later!

I wrote in my book about my friend Lisa who, when I was diagnosed with lupus, offered to trade off babysitting our preschoolers every morning so I could do swim therapy and then she would go work out, a gift of her time I could never hope to repay–when all she had to do was put her toddler in his stroller and run if it had been only about the exercise.

Her little boy David used to religiously leave a toy or some small object of his at our house to make sure he’d be able to come back.  It took us awhile to catch on to him; it was such a funny little thing to do. And he did it just about every day he came over.

My husband’s aunt lives in the hills nearby and her youngest is two years older than our oldest, so we got frequent and very welcome hand-me-downs from her.

I would come across some stray whatever and wonder, where did *this* come from?! Must be an Aunt Mary Lynn that I just don’t remember. I would check with Lisa on the phone later, or David would reclaim it quietly the next time–and stash something else behind a dresser, under a bed, or whatever hiding place appealed to him that day.

The so-called Aunt Mary Lynn objects became a regular joke between us, and when Lisa and her family found they were moving to Michigan she lamented, But who there is going to know what an Aunt Mary Lynn is?

I drove over to meet Robin at her brother’s house today and we sat and knitted awhile together. Then after a phone call or two and some time meeting two small nieces waking up from their naps as their mommy arrived, it was a good time to go pick up Kunmi.

Going to the door, Robin had her hands full; I offered to grab her knitting for her, tucked in a plastic bag and just a few steps from me.

Sure, thanks!

I had my cane in one hand, my purse and big knitting bag in the other and then hers and decided the easiest way to deal with this was simply to stick her knitting in with mine.

We went off to Green Planet Yarns in Campbell (hi Carol there!) and had a great time. Robin found just the yarn for hats for those nieces: soft baby alpaca with sparkles. In pink. It doesn’t get better than that.

I came home quite tired. “Mom? What are those red spots on your face?” Lupus rash. A little too much sun. Time to take it easy for a day or two.

Robin and Kunmi’s flight home to Maryland leaves early tomorrow morning.

And I sat down on the couch, pulled out my knitting–

–you saw this coming–

–and out tumbled Robin’s Alchemy sock yarn and half-done project in its bag.

Aunt Mary Lynn yarn. This is a first.

(Richard told me I was too tired to drive it back over there and to just mail it to her; I called her, and she reassured me she was quite happy to knit those hats with that new yarn and not to worry about it.  Robin is a dear.)

So now you know she has to come back. It’s the rule.

Robin and her knitting-group friend Kunmi, having flown out together to visit their families here, stopped by today. We were chatting, and then Kunmi glanced out the window and exclaimed, “You have goldfinches!”

We walked over into the family room with the big picture windows and the feeders just outside and I discovered a fellow enthusiast.

The birds played their part perfectly: I scooped out a little suet cake and tossed it on the box, saying that that would bring in a Bewick’s wren, and right on cue one flew down from the trees to the patio, then the dolly, then up to that box for its snack. They’re friendly, I explained, and plentiful right around here but nearly extinct on the East Coast; I treasure mine.

I described how my son Richard and Kim had given me a book for Christmas that both describes various species and lets you play their songs–right up close to my ears where I can hear! Cool! So, Friday I’d been playing the calls the book says that Cooper’s hawks make when something threatens their nest.

I looked up to see that everything had fled, gone, the patio, the feeders, the hanging cake, the box. Even the squirrels. Too funny.

But even funnier was sitting down at the computer the next morning and, not having seen either hawk since most likely their babies fledged a month or so ago, there was the adult male: right on the box, right there, looking eye-to-eye with me through the window.

For about a minute.

You know how breathtaking that is. And it was a cool morning, so midway, he fluffed up his feathers a bit; I wanted to stroke them, they looked so soft.

Hey, hey, none of that thought, and he fluttered over to the dolly and looked again from a little bit farther away. Cocked his head and looked around; there hadn’t been any prey around when he came in, it’s as if he simply wanted to make sure about those sounds he was hearing the day before. Or something.

American goldfinch, lesser goldfinch, house finch, Cassin finch, Oregon junco, plain brown California towhee vs the brilliant colors of the Eastern ones, Kunmi loved it.

In came a jay, and she exclaimed over how different it looked from the ones back home. They laughed when I said, Yes, it’s long and thin like it’s ready to hit the beach.

I told the story of the new world-leading cardiac center at Stanford that came to be because of a blue bird, I’m assuming a jay because of its willingness to hold still through all that.

A moment of kindness that changed the world of cardiology.

We went off to Coupa Cafe, where both of them found a way to treat us all; we went to Apple’s flagship store, about to be–hmm, re-shipped? There will soon be a much bigger one.  (Hey, Robin, I bet your brother already knows about it.) We meandered through some of the old areas of town and neighborhoods near Stanford, enjoying the architecture.

It’s wonderful to see the place where you live through the eyes of those who do not.

Two highschoolers at church, a young woman and a young man, interviewed my husband and me a few weeks ago for a project they were working on; they seated us together and then asked each of us our memories of various events in our lives.

There was a get-together tonight at the home of one of those kids, and I happened to be talking to the dad of the other. I’d wanted for awhile to tell both sets of parents what I’d seen that day in their children–the light in their eyes. I’d never had a real conversation in private with either kid before that day, but I tell you: they were *nice* people. I was very proud of them.

The dad beamed, and as the conversation went on, he admitted that, still, for all that, his two kids fought with each other. It drove him crazy how much they fought!

I laughed and tried to reassure him of the normalcy of all that. Is there a parent out there whose kids never once fought? Kids learn as they grow how to get along with people who may disagree with them in the safety of a family setting, given comfort (no matter how much they may resist it) by the fact that if they overstep, there are limits and those limits will be enforced. And also–that someone else’s point of view is as important as their own.

I was once at the wedding of a young man whose little sister was 11 to his 29 if I remember right, and they were teasing and needling each other while their mom rolled her eyes. Siblings!

Part of being human.

And since we are only human. As part of that growing up, all kids need their basic inner goodness reflected back at them: every kid needs an adult who is not their parent thinking the world of them and expecting only the best out of them because they only have to see the best.

And I have to tell you, having a teenager think the world of you back just totally rocks.

The weatherman predicted a goodly warmth for today. We got up to 67. I got to feel, as I did the first day I worked with this, how a yarn so fine I could barely tell it was against my right hand nevertheless warmed my hand noticeably, in a way no other fiber has ever done while I knit.

I learned something this evening: qiviut can indeed be frogged. Even when you carefully wound the longtail end around each purl bump of the first row. I debated letting the curvy lengths pile up fetchingly on each other for a photoshoot as I undid, but common sense kicked in–let’s not push my luck.

Sometimes when there’s a nagging feeling as you go along, the only good thing to do is to hold it up in the mirror as if trying it on. There’s something about putting it in the context of the human body that clarifies things.

The mixture of laces wasn’t perfect. Too wide to too tight. I finally saw it. Normally I might rinse the project on the needles to set overnight to get a good idea of its post-blocking state, because that usually makes everything look better, but, again, I wasn’t about to risk any degree of felting it together.

It wasn’t by any means a waste of stitches, but rather a good bit of learning achieved in a short amount of time that I can’t wait to put to good use now. I even have an idea of how many individual stitches I can get out of my yardage–so, yes, today the ‘I’m counting’ thing was on steroids.

It all counts for good towards the end result. It’s going to be so gorgeous.

Robin wanted to knit her sister-in-law something, maybe a hat, or, say, fingerless gloves for walking the dog; we agreed to all meet up at Purlescence for yarn choosing.

I had shown her my qiviut project already, so I brought along a shawl I had started doing in Cascade Epiphany before putting it down to work on all the crazy-knitting I did for my family reunion.

I related to them the question I’d asked Kaye last night: “What would you say is the softest yarn in your shop?”

Kaye had thought hard a moment: “The Epiphany. That, and the Cashvera.” (The latter is heavier and part synthetic.)

The two sisters checked out both; Robin asked me questions. Yes, I’d made a hat using 70 stitches and knitting the Epiphany doubled; for a single-color hat (unlike mine), knit plain-ish, one skein should do it.

Robin’s sister-in-law, who isn’t a knitter, tried to resist being splurged on, and yet–she in a way returned the favor: she said how wonderful it surely would feel for Robin to have that yarn going between her hands as she worked with it, and it was clear she wanted for Robin to be able to enjoy that.

Can you just picture their smiles as they got in their car to go back to work? I got to see it. Purlescence now has two fewer skeins of that gorgeous royal blue.

And having paid all that attention to that yarn myself during all that, my needles had an Epiphany of their own for awhile after I got home. While they were checking out the shelves and the shop models, I’d worked out the kinks of the pattern I was putting together and had gotten past where I’d let it stump me previously.

And now I am making the leap into the unknown with the qiviut, too, from part one to part two: how will a yarn I have never used before look all dressed up in these laces? I’m finding out.

Larger-needled project and small, switching off as the hands tire of holding one or the other, a slow, lovely dance back and forth.

Begin the Beguine.

My friend Robin, a fellow knitter, flew in from my hometown and I got to spend part of today with her. We tried to figure out how long it had been; must have been three years now, way too long. We were catching up, we had no particular agenda–till she said she’d realized she’d packed no chocolate.

Hey!

I had her sample some of mine: Valrhona 71%, some Endangered Species dark with hazelnut toffee, and then we were off to the local Whole Foods, which has more choices than anywhere.

She passed on the Vosges chocolate/bacon bar. So far.

She went to her brother’s after that (I don’t get to keep her all the time) and I to KnitNight.

Where I got six carefully-knitted rows of lace done at Purlescence. Qiviut is like the finest cup of hot chocolate: you savor it slowly, a sipped stitch at a time.